Wednesday, February 29, 2012

One of the most satisfying magazine reads I've had lately is in the annual Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair ... which is kind of odd, because the subject, British comedian Steve Coogan, is hardly Hollywood material. In fact, that's the very point of David Kamp's excellent profile; Coogan, despite two decades of solid fame in the U.K., is far from a known quanity on the other side of the Atlantic, despite having great fans in the comedy business.

Coogan emerges in the piece as having a hefty chip on his shoulder , yet is funny enough to remain charming ... sometimes at the same time. Example: he bristles, comically, while noting he must be the only British actor not to have been cast in the Harry Potter movies. (And, yes, he has the face for it.)

The article focuses on Coogan's involvement in the hacking scandal, and his determination to see the fight against News Corp. through. As it turns out, Coogan gave up on his resolve to not settle after the issue went to press; Kamp updates that element here, on the VF blog.

I think Steve Coogan is a genius, and a comic treasure: he can do finely tuned monologues, zingers, impersonations and, yes, actual acting.

As noted in the Vanity Fair piece, here's a true gem: an excerpt from Coogan's series The Trip, in which he and Rob Brydon compete for the bragging rights for the better, or precise, impersonation of Michael Caine.

The article, incidentally, focuses quite a bit on Alan Partridge, who has been a key part, maybe the defining part, of Coogan's comedy from the start. I was amused to learn that Coogan is planning to revive the blandly obnoxious host for a movie.

Here's how Kamp described Partridge's introduction (also noting, I must add, the funniest family motto of them all) in Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge:

Indeed, in Episode One, Partridge bounded onto his set—“modeled on the lobby of a top international hotel,” he claimed—with his tackiness fully formed, right down to his soon-to-be-signature ill-fitting double-breasted blazer. (He wore it in burgundy on opening night, but would later unveil a billiard-green version that came with a crest on the breast pocket that included images of a partridge, a pear tree, a microphone, and the words cognoscens me cognoscens te aha.) “Tonight is what I call a J.F.K. kind of a night,” Partridge announced with bravado and good cheer. “Because just as everyone can remember what they were doing when President Kennedy was shot in the head, I like to think that, 30 years from now, people will remember what they were doing when I first said, ‘A-ha!’ ”

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

I was surprised to read this evening that Andy Warhol died 25 years ago last week. It really didn't seem that long ago.

Warhol is pretty fascinating: vapid, a genius, an innovator, a thief ... he seemed to embrace all of the descriptions.

The photo above is a snap I took in New York in November. The tall, glossy, chrome-plated statue was unveiled just last March, near the Union Square building where Warhol operated the first iteration of The Factory, the quasi-underground studio/hangout where he mass-produced his work. (He moved to another neighbourhood in 1968.)

This video has been making the rounds lately thanks to a pickup on Reddit and circulation on Tumblr, and small wonder it's caught on. It was taped last fall, featuring a young man named Tyler who had broken his arm. The medical team needed to reset it, which meant, effectively, breaking his bones again to put them right. To do that, a general anesthetic was administered ... and then the (perceived) fun started.

Appropriately, I think, this is one of the songs that our own kid happens to love.

The promo film that The Who made for it is a hoot - love those wires and PAs, lip-synchers! - and even more so when you notice the rowers in the water wondering what exactly is going on behind them. It doesn't take away, though, from one of my favourite Sixties songs - the title of which, of course, was lent to the 1979 documentary on The Who and its history.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

We're cat people in this house, even though we don't have any now. (Bloody allergies. Sigh.) I'm not given to insanely cute pictures of cats, although I do chuckle at funny cat pictures, as family and sharp readers may know.

But this one was too charming to resist. I came across it a few days ago (through Tumblr, I think; I forgot to make a note of the source), and showed it to Martha. It reminded me of how kids find it hard to give up teddy bears as they age.

When House was launched, the inspirations that it drew from Sherlock Holmes - a dyspeptic, antisocial genius with a drug problem and an inclination to humiliate those closest to him - were obvious.

This is a fun video that makes those connections deeper, featuring Harry Chapin's Cats In The Cradle, with scenes from House (starring Hugh Laurie), Sherlock (starring Benedict Cumberbatch) and Fortysomething (starring both).

Saturday, February 25, 2012

This is one of my lazy-weekend songs, and this video assembled for it fits the season (if not necessarily the sludgy, mostly-melted view outside our front window at the moment).

An interesting thing about Koop that I didn't know until I bought an anthology album: almost everything you hear on their records (apart from vocals and occasional instruments, which I guess are recorded as a last resort) comes from a microsample of original vinyl. It takes years for the Swedish duo to put together an album. Oddly enough, they do perform live, too.

On the weekend, we met up with Natalie MacLean, the wine writer; I've interviewed her in the past, but not in person. It was great to meet, have a chat and talk about a subject she knows inside out and which I wish I knew a good bit better. On Saturday, we're publishing my interview (which tees up the Chile and Argentina-focused A Taste of Wine show at the Convention Centre) on cbc.ca/nl ... have a look for it. The article includes Natalie's picks for the top five bargain wines available at the NLC.

What a broadcast this must have been. In 1979, the BBC aired Something Else, featuring The Jam as they were establishing their reputation, and Joy Division as they were still creating theirs. Remarkable.

I came across this tidbit this evening: Fierce Panda, the well-named indie label, is compiling a double-disc tribute album to Talk Talk, featuring the likes of Arcade Fire, Joan As Policewoman and Bon Iver tackling tracks from the rather small output of Mark Hollis & Co. Oddly enough, I was humming a Talk Talk tune earlier in the evening, and was thinking about what an odd band they were: launched as a cute-ish new wave-like band with white shirts and skinny ties, and then evolving into The Colour of Spring, from 1986, which is one of my all-time favourite albums. And then they got even more interesting ... and then Hollis just dropped off the planet, musically at least. Apart from the forgettable synthpop stuff at the start, they were years and years ahead of their time.

My Instagram feed

Why Dot Dot Dot?

That is, where did this blog get its name?

Dot Dot Dot is Morse code for the letter 'S,' the full message Guglielmo Marconi claimed to have received atop Signal Hill in St. John's in 1901. It ushered in the age of telecommunications. My maternal grandfather worked as a telegraph operator for Canadian Marconi on Signal Hill for many years.
As well, I have a habit of overusing the ellipsis when I write ... as frequent readers might notice.